Story+2008-05-02+Ft.+Lauderdale,+FL

“Good evening, Fort Lauderdale (crowd cheers) this is for Dan (crowd cheers)…”
 * 02.05.08 Ft. Lauderdale, FL, before the video tribute to Danny**

“Is there anybody alive out there? (crowd cheers) is there anybody alive? (crowd cheers)…”
 * 02.05.08 Ft. Lauderdale, FL, intro to “Radio Nowhere”**

“Oh yeah…I gotta get all the shit out of my pockets, can’t play with anything in your pockets…can’t play with your watch on – very bad form - can’t play with your wallet in your back pocket either…”
 * 02.05.08 Ft. Lauderdale, FL, intro to “This Hard Land”**

“Thank you, thank you (crowd cheers)…we wanna thank you for all of your prayers and condolences for Danny, we appreciate that (crowd cheers) Danny, there is a, uh, Danny Federici Melanoma Fund, if you go online, you can see that, see how you can support them…uh…way back, uh…sort of the last couple weeks I’ve been telling a Danny-story every night so…of which there are many, many, many, many (chuckles) but, uh, my parents moved to California when I was nineteen in 1969…they wanted to go someplace where nobody saw them do any of the drugs they wanted to do (chuckles) not really, it’s a joke…but, uh, they went to California when they, when my parents moved out from the house I’d lived in since I was thirteen, the band moved in like the same night…it was me, it was Danny Federici, Mad Dog Vincent Lopez, uh …and Danny’s new-born son…you can imagine, I’m, I’m not sure how he survived in a house full of nineteen-year-olds, and Danny was a freak for the CB radio, he was like a gadget nut and, uh, so he took the room that my grandmother died in and turned it into a radio room (chuckles) and to do that, Danny had to climb on the roof, then kick out the window on the second floor and they got this huge CB radio antenna on the roof and Danny would be in that room till three am contacting anybody you can imagine – aliens, that’s exactly right (chuckles)(laughs from the crowd) contacting aliens (chuckles) and he was quite successful (chuckles) he was quite successful because in those days the CB radio, it hadn’t even hit its stride, you can say that’s what it had but (chuckles) so he’d sit in that room and then he would invite people over that he heard, that he got in touch with (laughs from the crowd) and we were like the only house of freaks in New Jersey at the time (laughs from the crowd)(crowd cheers) and so I would come downstairs and I would see Danny in the living room filled with like astonished truck drivers, you know (laughs from the crowd) not quite sure how they got there, you know, or what they were doing or we were doing there but, uh, that lasted for exactly thirty days and the landlord came and threw us all out (chuckles) (laughs from the crowd) so, anyway, we’re gonna do, uh, this one tonight for Danny and for you, alright (crowd cheers)…for all you young kids, CB radio was like a really, really primitive version of a localized internet…”
 * 02.05.08 Ft. Lauderdale, FL, intro to “Growin’ Up”**

“Good evening, Fort Lauderdale (crowd cheers) are we having fun yet? (crowd cheers) sister, sister, sister…alright, let’s see who’s out there tonight (crowd cheers) hello, girls, shake that thing, that’s right (?) come on (crowd cheers)(?) come on (?)(crowd cheers) alright…(?)…alright, alright, alright…look at you…this is a song called ”Livin’ in the Future” but it’s about what’s happening right now…how along with everything that we love about our home and where we’re proud of about where we come from…we’ve had to add to the picture here in America over the past eight years things like rendition, illegal wiretapping, the rolling-back of civil liberties, no Habeas Corpus – these are all things that when I was a kid, people told you that only happen someplace else…and, uh, maybe because of the color of your skin or your circumstance or your religion, you may feel these things don’t have a big effect on you but they’re all an affront to the Constitution, which means they’re an affront to ourselves and who we are when we say “We’re the Americans,” this is a song about sleeping through changes that happened here that we never thought could…but the mighty E Street Band is here tonight to do something about it (crowd cheers) a change is gonna come! (crowd cheers) and what we’re gonna do about right now is we’re gonna sing about it, that’s right…oh, Mighty One, give me a hand, woo!...”
 * 02.05.08 Ft. Lauderdale, FL, intro to “Livin’ in the Future”**

“Woo! (crowd cheers) alright, alright…alright, this is for all you Florida girls (crowd cheers) and one from New Jersey (crowd cheers)…”
 * 02.05.08 Ft. Lauderdale, FL, intro to “Girls in Their Summer Clothes”**

“Alright, happy birthday, you’re twenty-one…and Barbara Carr and Soozie Tyrell!...”
 * 02.05.08 Ft. Lauderdale, FL, intro to “Thunder Road”**

“Captain James Michael Brown’s gonna join us on trumpet…this is our pilot, this man’s responsible for our lives – and he plays the trumpet!...”
 * 02.05.08 Ft. Lauderdale, FL, intro to “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”**

“Thank you, Florida (crowd cheers)(?)…woo!...we got some friends in the hall tonight, folks from the Daily Bread Foodbank and folks from the (?) Feeding Program, the Daily Bread Foodbank’s (?) response to hunger here in Florida, in south Florida over a quarter of a million kids are gonna go to bed hungry, please help out the Daily Bread Foodbank and the (?) Feeding Program, they’re folks that are out on the frontlines doing God’s work, they could use your support… (…) Garry W. Tallent (crowd cheers) Little Steven (crowd cheers) Sister Soozie Tyrell (crowd cheers) the Mighty Max Weinberg (crowd cheers) Professor Roy Bittan (crowd cheers) from the Sessions Band, Charlie Giordano (crowd cheers) the incredible Nils Lofgren (crowd cheers) and the biggest man you’ve ever seen: Clarence “Big Man” Clemons (crowd cheers) Fort Lauderdale! (crowd cheers) Florida! (crowd cheers) Florida! (crowd cheers) Florida! (crowd cheers) Florida! (crowd cheers) you’ve just seen the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, hard-rocking, earth-shocking, booty-shaking, love-making, Viagra-taking, history-making legendary (crowd: “E Street Band”)(crowd cheers)…”
 * 02.05.08 Ft. Lauderdale, FL, intro to “American Land”**

//Compiled by Johanna Pirttijärvi//